Brand SA: 'Pay back the money'

(Image extracted from the Brand SA website)

For more:

• Mail & Guardian: Brand SA wants its bucks back... Surely the minister's not acting in bad faith? She's already in a row over allegedly irregular government adspend in The New Age, now Communications Minister Faith Muthambi is in another row, this time over funds that Brand SA claims she owes it. It's reported that it wants returned the money it was forced to divert from its budget to fund her national communications task team.
  

  Faith Muthambi: Brand SA claims her department owes it money - and it wants it. (Image: GCIS)

  Hollow claim

  According the Mail & Guardian report, 'even before Brand SA agreed to host the task team, it had raised concerns over funding, according to a letter from Miller Matola, CEO of Brand SA, to the Brand SA board. Matola had requested that the department "favour Brand SA with a letter confirming that the funding will be transferred to Brand South Africa so that the entity does not face cash- flow challenges upon meeting any of the task team obligations".'

  But, reports Mail & Guardian, "Muthambi's spokesperson, Ayanda Hollow, now says that 'at no stage did the minister agree to compensate Brand SA' for the costs incurred in hosting the task team."

• Mail & Guardian: SABC worker lays assault charge against head of news... Mail & Guardian reports the SABC's head of news, Jimi Matthews, has been accused of assaulting a staff member outside Parliament during the State of the Nation Address.

  It is reported that the woman, who was a member of the SABC's Cape Town team, has laid charges of assault against Matthews. She was "victimised, harassed and assaulted verbally, physically and psychologically by a male executive manager following a technical glitch beyond her control or that of the crew she supervised", reads the complaint to the CCMA, according to Mail & Guardian. It reports "the alleged incident took place outside Parliament on 12 February during the national broadcaster's coverage of the State of the Nation Address. Matthews is said to have attacked the woman who was unable to receive a feed from Parliament due to signal jamming, according to the Media Online.

  The charge was laid at the Cape Town Central Police Station and a case was also lodged with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) on Wednesday.