Wednesday, January 27, 2010.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon de Ryhove.

Making headlines today:

South Africa's State-owned power utility Eskom is in the process of preparing an answering affidavit, which would be lodged with the South Gauteng High Court, in response to its former CEO Jacob Maroga, who is suing for reinstatement, or for R85,7-million in compensation.

Eskom was unable to immediately reveal nature of its counter arguments. But a spokesperson confirmed that its legal department was preparing a defence and that the document would be made public through the normal legal filing processes.

Eskom has claimed previously that Maroga's offer to quit his position had been "clear and unambiguous", despite his persistent assertions since then that he had never tendered a resignation.

The offer was said to have been made verbally, and had never been put in writing.

But Maroga claimed to have been "summarily dismissed", despite insufficient grounds to do so and had, thus, taken legal action.

Cosatu has labelled Maroga's compensation claim "massively excessive", adding that it was "yet another example of the culture of self-entitlement and greed".

China's ZTE has announced that it's won a contract worth 378-million-dollars to supply telecoms equipment and services to South African mobile operator Cell C.

In its latest overseas deal, ZTE will provide GSM systems and services to Cell C.

ZTE and hometown rival Huawei Technologies have been two of China's biggest success stories in their efforts to expand abroad, selling their telecoms equipment to a wide range of operators in both developing and developed markets.

ZTE's revenue is expected to jump 38 percent in 2009 to 61-billion yuan, while profit is expected to rise 45% to 2,41-billion yuan, with much of the growth coming from a surge in exports.

Also making headlines:

The World Economic Forum gets under way in Switzerland.
Truck assembler Nissan Diesel South Africa is expanding its African footprint to include 11 new countries.
Australia seeks to strengthen ties with South Africa.
And, a fuel task team is working on plans to ensure there is enough petrol, diesel and jet fuel to get millions of spectators to all the World Cup games.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit engineeringnews.co.za.