First Take SA

ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa says members need to stop treating the party as a cash cow. Ramaphosa was addressing ANC members in Rustenburg, in the North West. The party's National Working Committee descended on the province to address a number of issues ahead of the Branch, Regional and Provincial Conferences.

The CEO of EOH Holdings, Stephen van Coller, says tender irregularities involving government contracts and poor financial controls were rife when he joined the company in 2018. He told the State Capture Commission of Inquiry that some workers in the company colluded with government officials to bypass the tender process and inflate prices. Van Coller says irregular tendering and lack of proper financial controls led to the company incuring debt of about 3-point-7 billion rand.

Former President Jacob Zuma has walked out of the commission of Inquiry into State Capture. This is after Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo refused to recuse himself from hearing Zuma's testimony. The Commisison has now adjourned until next week.

Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago says that monetary policy has eased financial conditions and improved the resilience of households and business amid the economic implications of Covid-19. The bank announced its decision to keep the repo rates unchanged at 3.5 percent as expected. Delivering the Monetary Policy Committee's decision, Kganyago says monetary policy on its own cannot improve the potential growth rate of the economy or reduce fiscal risks.

The SABC has decided to suspend the Section 189 process for a period of seven days. This follows a board meeting that went on into the early hours of this morning to discuss retrenchments. Hundreds of staff members at the SABC offices across the country have been holding lunch time pickets since Monday to protest against the retrenchments which will affect 400 workers. Today, Communication Workers Union-CWU had planned a national blackout at the SABC.

The Right2KNow Campaign has called on the SABC to find other sources of funding rather than letting workers bear the brunt of mismanagement of the past administration. The organisation says it is concerned that the dispute between the public broadcaster management and unions has escalated to the point of a looming strike. This as the Communication Workers Union has served the SABC management with a 48 hour notice to strike. Meanwhile, Labour union BEMAWU has applied to the Labour Court to interdict the retrenchments.

Communications and Digital Technologies Deputy Minister Pinky Kekana says SABC Board and Executive members should personally pay the costs of cases they lose in courts. Kekana made the opening remarks as SABC appeared before Parliament's Communications Committee. The SABC Board, Executives and the Ministry appeared before the committee last night. There was also tension between some board members.

The National Taxi Alliance says it will not recognise all decisions and resolutions taken at the recent National Taxi Lekgotla. It also wants answers on the non- payment of 1.35 billion rand Covid-19 relief funds to the taxi industry. The alliance has given Transport Minister, Fikile Mbalula and the presidency, 14-days to respond to their demands. Members affiliated to the alliance marched to the Transport department and the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has appealed to the international community and BRICS partners to support a comprehensive stimulus package for African countries so that the continent can rebuild its economies following the devastating effects of Covid-19. Ramaphosa was speaking at the opening of the virtual BRICS summit yesterday. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the summit under the theme: "Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth'. Ramaphosa says the pandemic has shown the need to build more resilient national and regional supply-chains.

We end with this story, The leader of the Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) Church, Shepherd Bushiri, and his wife, Mary, will not be in South Africa on Thursday (19 Nov) as demanded by the Hawks. That's according to their lawyer. The couple fled to Malawi last week in contravention of their bail conditions. They were released on bail in the Pretoria Magistrates court where they, and three others, are facing fraud, theft and money laundering charges involving more than 100 million rand.