Gees, this has been quite a breaking story from Friday when Cosatu filed an application with the courts to get the sale of 15% of Vodacom to Vodaphone from the UK. The Rand dropped 3% and people were pretty nervous as they thought the new Zuma government was backing Cosatu’s interdict with the courts.

But the new Zuma government didn’t back Cosatu which is going to make people feel a lot more confident in the new Government Zuma is putting into place.

The Cosatu argument was based on the idea that its better for ownership of Vodacom to remain within South Africa and that this deal is just benefiting the wealthy. I don’t quite agree with this… I mean at first I thought it would be better if Vodacom remained South African but some big companies you just can’t keep out. The message that would be sent to foreign companies if this deal had been blocked would have been ridiculously bad.

Even this brief attempt by Cosatu would make me scared if I was a foreign company contemplating investing in a South African company. We need foreign investment badly to help develop South Africa and to block this is foolhardy.

Now only if I had a couple of spare bucks lying around so I could buy myself some Vodacom stock. Cosatu says its going to keep opposing this deal and try mobilise its members to boycott Vodacom… Cosatu and Icasa have been ordered to cover the legal costs, there goes the members fees of Cosatu… feel sorry for the members.