May 27, 2015.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Leandi Kolver.
Making headlines:

Numbers of people at a xenophobia refugee camp in Durban increase.

Boko Haram kills at least 43 people in Nigeria's Borno state.

And, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says State-owned enterprises can spark radical economic transformation.

 

The numbers at the only remaining xenophobia refugee camp in KwaZulu-Natal are increasing instead of decreasing, eThekwini Mayor James Nxumalo said on Tuesday.

Nxumalo told exco members that xenophobia in the province had stabilised, however, he was concerned about the growing number of people at the Chatsworth refugee camp.

The UN was reportedly providing assistance with a rent subsidy worth R2 000 for families and R1 000 for displaced individuals.

The city said while it was grateful for the intervention, it had asked the UN not to operate at the camp because it believed that was the reason the numbers had increased from 260 to 600 people.

Nxumalo said the city had since raised the matter with the UN High Commissioner.

 

Boko Haram militants have killed at least 43 people in a five-hour assault on the town of Gubio in northeastern Nigeria's Borno state.

Thousands of people have been killed and several million displaced in a six-year Boko Haram insurgency that once saw the group control an area the size of Belgium in the northeast of Africa's biggest oil producer. But the Islamist insurgents have since lost most of their gains to military counter-offensives.

The latest attack lasted for around five hours on Saturday afternoon.

Details of such attacks often take a number of days to surface outside of the affected areas due to poor telecommunications in the remote northeastern region of Nigeria.

It is estimated that more than 400 houses had been burned by the insurgents.

 

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says State-owned enterprises (or SOEs) have the potential to stimulate “reindustrialisation and radical economic transformation.” He was speaking during the Presidency’s budget vote debate on Tuesday.

Ramaphosa said it made sense for the efforts of SOEs and private businesses to intersect in a partnership for economic and social development.

He said these enterprises command significant resources and hold great potential for employment creation, infrastructure growth, technology development and small enterprise promotion.

Ramaphosa said his office's main task was to strengthen SOEs and to improve governance, stabilise finances, increase productivity and ensure that SOEs effectively perform the functions for which they were established.

Also making headlines:
A new chamber of commerce is launched to increase trade between South Africa and Peru.

Trade union Solidarity has lambasted government for importing foreign skills in the form of 48 Cuban engineers instead of employing South Africans.

The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council said donors needed to step up their funding efforts for Central African Republic.

The World Health Organisation warned that the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone is expected to take all of 2015 to stamp out and may persist even longer because of dwindling financing.

Libya's internationally recognised prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, survived an assassination attempt by gunmen who opened fire as he was leaving a session of the elected parliament.
Video footage found in captured Boko Haram camps by Nigeria's military seems to give some of the clearest indication that foreign fighters hold positions of power within the Nigerian Islamist militant group.

And, African Union observers said that Ethiopia's parliamentary election held on Sunday was credible except for a few irregularities, but the opposition dismissed the vote as marred by violations including ballot box theft.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.