Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) president Joseph Kabila has intervened in the ongoing dispute between Vodacom and Congolese Wireless Network (CWN), the junior partner in the JSE-listed cellular group’s operation in the troubled central African nation, to try to find a solution to a protracted dispute between the parties. Earlier this year Vodacom and CWN agreed to international arbitration proceedings in Brussels after relations between the two groups appeared to break down completely.

A company owned partly by communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda was given a R20m contract to investigate service delivery protests in Mpumalanga, City Press reported on Sunday. The contract was allegedly awarded to Abalozi Security Risk Advisory Services without following tender rules. An Nyanda family trust is alleged to have a 45% shareholding in Abalozi.

Sharlto Copley and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, two of the stars of The A-Team movie, were in SA this week for premieres of the film hosted by Nu Metro and MTN. Copley is already well-known in SA and the rest of the world for his star turn as Wikus van de Merwe in District 9, the SA-flavoured science-fiction hit of 2009. In the A-Team, he takes on the role of HM Murdock, the nutty military pilot played by Dwight Schultz in the original television series.

Cellphone group Vodacom and its partner, financial services firm Nedbank, will launch M-Pesa, Kenya’s wildly popular money transfer service, in SA at the end of August. The two companies have set 31 August as the date for the product’s official SA launch.

A proposed public broadcasting law will place the SABC under the control of the communications minister and mark a return to the days when the ruling party determined what was aired on television and radio, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Friday. “It is the final plank in the ANC’s plan, hatched at Polokwane, to ensure that the SABC reflects the values of the ANC,” Zille wrote in her weekly newsletter.

Well-known and colourful Internet industry personality Justin Spratt has resigned from Dimension Data division Internet Solutions and will join Quirk eMarketing on 1 September. Spratt has been appointed as managing partner of the 80-person digital marketing agency, which was founded by Rob Stokes in 1999.

Government does not understand the magnitude of the “crisis” SA’s telecommunications industry is facing, says former Google SA country manager Stafford Masie. During a panel discussion at the Tech4Africa conference held in Johannesburg on Thursday, Masie, who is now consulting to undersea cable operator Seacom, slammed what he described as a “shambles” at the department of communications as well as problems at the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), which he says are holding back the sector.

SuperSport CEO Imtiaz Patel will succeed Nolo Letele as group CEO of pay-TV broadcaster MultiChoice on 1 October. Letele, who was due to retire later this year, has been named as executive chairman of MultiChoice SA. Announcing the changes on Thursday, a MultiChoice spokesman says the board had agreed on an executive chairmanship to “meet the challenges faced by the underlying entities”.

A senior home affairs official and a business executive have appeared in the commercial crimes court for alleged corruption relating…

Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications, chaired by ANC MP Ismail Vadi, has summoned the boards of the SABC and Sentech to answer questions about problems affecting both organisations. The committee on Thursday said it had “decided to invite the full board of the SABC to appear before it on 24 August 2010”.