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.

I just received a text on my phone with the following text:

I keep you entertained! I keep u informed! Surf! I react to your touch! Join us from 9pm tonight 25 Sept at Vodaworld. I make my appearance @ midnight!

For those of us lucky enough to be in Cape Town we won’t be able to attend… Is Vodacom trying to be like Apple and have some hype and ‘fans’ avidly waiting for it to arrive?

We’ll soon see how succussful their launch of the Apple iPhone is…