For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Thabi Shomolekae.

Making headlines: DA welcomes commitment to investigate Secretary to Parliament salary increase; BOSA aims for top four in May elections; And, The lights are on in South Africa and many people are suspicious

DA welcomes commitment to investigate Secretary to Parliament salary increase

The Democratic Alliance welcomed Acting National Assembly Speaker Lechesa Tsenoli’s commitment to investigate the salary increase of the Secretary to Parliament.

The matter relates to the salary hike that was approved by the then Speaker of the National Assembly Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for the Secretary to Parliament Xolile George, raising his salary from the advertised and approved maximum of R2.6-million to R4.4-million.

DA Chief Whip Siviwe Gwarube argued on Friday morning during the National Assembly’s Programming Committee, that the salary hike of over 70% of the Secretary to Parliament must be investigated.

Gwarube said she took the matter to the Joint Standing Committee of Financial Management of Parliament to probe but claimed that the African National Congress blocked those efforts.

BOSA aims for top four in May elections

Build One South Africa leader Mmusi Maimane told Polity that his party is aiming to be amongst the top four political parties in the country in this year’s crucial May 29 elections.

BOSA will contest South Africa’s national elections with 400 candidate representatives of communities and constituencies across the country.

Polls predict that the African National Congress will not win an outright majority, with Maimane predicting that parties will have to form a “grand” opposition coalition.

He told Polity that in choosing coalition partners he was selective about what the parties had to offer, stressing that the ANC was definitely excluded from coalition discussions.

He said he could speak to any other parties, in general, and work with how the plan to govern could be achieved.

And, The lights are on in South Africa and many people are suspicious

South Africa is enjoying a rare streak of uninterrupted electricity right before elections, drawing more suspicion than praise in a nation that’s become accustomed to the daily power cuts that have dragged on for years.

The country is currently in its fourth successive week of no outages — the longest period South Africans have consistently had electricity supply in more than two years.

The recovery coincides with political parties ramping up their campaigns before the May 29 vote, in which the ruling African National Congress risks losing its parliamentary majority for the first time in three decades. Almost two-thirds of people in a BrandMapp-Silverstone survey last year said they’d consider not voting for the ANC because of power cuts.

A prolonged resumption of the outages is likely to result in a lower voter turnout — a scenario that could work in favour of the main opposition Democratic Alliance, which has previously had a good record in getting its supporters to cast ballots.

The DA has put the improved power supply down to the state quadrupling the billions of rands it spends on diesel to run emergency plants over the past four years. The government insists it’s the result of the work state utility Eskom has done on repairing its facilities.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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