Browsing: Siphiwe Nyanda

When former head of the SA National Defence Force, Gen (Ret) Siphiwe Nyanda, was appointed as minister of communications last year, there was much grumbling. “What does a military man know about communications?” quickly became the general sentiment.

The Communication Workers Union is “horror-struck by infightings” in the communications department led by minister Siphiwe Nyanda. “We have observed that there is a battle of power that is hampering progress between the director-general Mamodupi Mohlala and the minister of communications,” the union said in a statement on Friday.

The Democratic Alliance will refer communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda to the Public Protector. It wants the government watchdog to investigate tenders that Nyanda may be involved in. The DA’s shadow minister for communications, Niekie van den Berg, says the DA will decide later on Friday when it will approach the Public Protector.

Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda has dismissed allegations in a newspaper report that he may suspend department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala as “false, spurious and malicious”. Nyanda’s spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso says in a statement that the minister “exercises political oversight over the department and gives it policy direction in line with his statutory and constitutional mandate”.

Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda is planning to suspend department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala, according to a newspaper report. Business Day reports on Thursday that Nyanda may suspend Mohlala following “repeated disagreements over tenders she refused to sign”.

The ministry of communications is confident the board of directors it has selected to manage Sentech will turn around the state-owned business and it will not interfere in the running of the company. This is despite a newspaper report at the weekend that acting CEO Beverly Ngwenya and chief financial officer Mohammed Cassim had resigned and were being charged for “gross negligence” as a result of alleged reckless spending.

Uncertainty still surrounds state-owned signal distributor Sentech as it awaits the outcome of an investigation by a task team appointed…

Stephen Mncube is the new chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) and will serve a five-year term that will end in mid-2015. Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda made the announcement at a dinner in Sandton on Wednesday evening to mark the end